For many individuals, automobiles are utilized to transport more than just adults, children and soccer equipment. A multitude of items, such as groceries, automobile safety equipment, toys, first aid equipment and/or other sporting goods, typically can be found in an automobile. However, many of these items can be damaged and/or cause damage to the interior of an automobile by sliding around uncontrollably during driving and thus striking the interior portions of the automobile cargo area.
In an attempt to remedy this problem, several devices have been proposed. Examples of such devices may be found by reference to U.S. Pat. No. 3,986,656 to November, U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,745 to Haydock, U.S. Pat. No. 4,884,733 to Geeves, U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,922 to Harris, U.S. Pat. No. 5,215,205 to Behlman, U.S. Pat. No. 5,230,690 to Adkinson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,358 to Haase, U.S. Pat. No. 5,518,170 to Rasmussen, U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,921 to Brooker, U.K. Patent No. 2,197,274 to Dudley, U.K. Patent No. 2,229,982 to Svendsen and German Patent No. 3,742,540 to Heinrich. In general, however, these designs are disadvantageous. For example, many do not provide adequate means for securing the actual device within the cargo area. Thus, they do not restrict the overall movement of the storage device in the cargo area, which in turn would not restrict the overall movement of the cargo. In addition, many of the designs are limited in configuration to generally rectangular or parallelogramical shapes, and thus may not provide the best constraint for the widest array of cargo. Also, many of these devices are bulky and expensive to manufacture.
It is readily apparent that an improved and affordable cargo retaining device is needed that is releasably adherable to carpet, provides the ability to be shaped in a multitude of configurations and can be easily folded to a compact unit when not in use. It is, therefore, to the provision of such improvements that the present invention is directed.